SCOTUS to Gilmore: Petition for Cert Denied

John Gilmore is disappointed that the Supreme Court refused to act on the danger posed by the unconstitutional position of the TSA, and its refusal to release the text of the law that it uses to require travelers to show identification. In his Petition for Certiorari, John asked the Court to decide whether the government may keep secret a law that affects millions of Americans every month, when the government has acknowledged what it claims are the contents of the law, and despite the fact that the government has never enunciated any reasonable basis for maintaining secrecy. This country has a remarkable history of publishing its laws, to give the public notice of the behavior the government demands of them. John has pursued this effort because, as he said on www.papersplease.org, "[u]ntil Americans have the ability to know the contents of the laws being applied to them, our Republic is in danger."

John hoped that the Supreme Court would intervene, and make clear that the government cannot deprive the public of the text of the laws that bind them. This issue now is left to the political process. We must insist that our elected representatives control the TSA, and hold it accountable for its actions by, first, demanding that it make public this and any other laws it promulgates to bind the public.

John thanks the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists, and the Special Libraries Association, who submitted compelling amicus briefs supporting his Petition for Certiorari.